Welcome

To The world of Biometrics

BIOMETRICS

What is Biometrics?
The word biometrics comes from the Greek words bios and metric, meaning'' life measurement''. By measuring something unique about an individual and using that to identify them, we can achieve a dramatic improvement in security of the key store. Newer biometric measurements include DNA from tissue samples, voice pattern, face pattern or even the arrangement of blood vessels in the retina or pattern of coloration in the cornea of the eye.

Why Use Biometrics?

Only biometrics can verify you as you Tokens (smartcards, etc.) aren't you and can be:

lost stolen duplicated (some) forgotten forgotten shared observed broken

Passwords aren't you and can be:

SHORT HISTORY OF BIOMETRICS

Joao de Barros, an explorer and writer, wrote that Chinese merchants used a form of biometrics by stamping childrens palm prints and footprints on paper with ink .In doing this, the Chinese solved a way to distinguish young children from one another. This is one of the earliest known cases of biometrics .Later an anthropologist named Alphonse Bertillion sought to fix the problem of identifying convicted criminals. He found that even if names changed, even if a person comes in disguise, certain elements of the body remained fixed . This led him to form a method of measuring the distinguishable parts of a persons body, which never changed throughout their life . Whenever a new criminal was caught, instead of taking down their name, the authorities would measure them and look for a matching card . This system was adopted by prisons and police stations across the country and world. As technology gets more and more advanced, the ways to distinguish the different biometrical signalments become more and more precise. led to field of biometric technologies that we live in today.

Using Biometrics:

Biometrics are used in two major ways : Identification and Verification. Identification is determining who a person is. It involves taking the measured characteristic and trying to find a match in a database containing records of people and that characteristic. This method can require a large amount of processing power and some time if the database is very large. It is often used in determining the identity 1of a suspect from crime scene information. Verification is determining if a person is who they say they are. It involves taking the measured characteristic and comparing it to the previously recorded data for that person. This method requires less processing power and time, and is often used for accessing places or information.

Physical Biometrics
Fingerprint
Iris Retina

Hand

Face
Voice Retina DNA

Fingerprint - analyzing fingertip patterns:

Among all the biometric techniques, fingerprint-based identification is the oldest method, which has been successfully used in numerous applications. Everyone is known to have unique, immutable fingerprints.
A fingerprint is made of a series of ridges and furrows on the surface of the finger. The uniqueness of a fingerprint can be determined by the pattern of ridges and furrows as well as the minutiae points.

Draw backs of fingure print biometrics

When hand is injured or burnt and even if we have slight disturbance in the cuticles also it will not access the user. So,its a failure. The potential uses for this biometric appear to be limited only by the willingness of people to use it.

Vascular Patterns - analyzing vein patterns

Vascular patterns are best described as a picture of the veins in a person's hand or face. The thickness and location of these veins are believed to be unique enough to an individual to be used to verify a person's identity. The most common form of vascular pattern readers are hand-based, requiring the user to place their hand on a curved reader that takes an infrared scan. This scan creates a picture that can then be compared to a database to verify the user's stated identity.

Advantages
Vascular pattern scanners can be found in testing at major military installations and is being considered by some established companies in the security industry and multi-outlet retailers. advantages over its counterparts, including the great difficulty in emulating another person's vein structure, and not having to worry about rain, glasses, or external injuries. effects of aging, heart attacks, and medical problems with one's arteries on the scans has yet to be determined fully. It also requires a large amount of space to mount the device is that the entire hand can be scanned which may restrict its usability. Currently it is still building acceptance

Disadvantages

It cant be used alone. It should be used with another biometric technique.

Facial Recognition - measuring facial characteristics

User faces the camera, standing about two feet from it. The system will locate the user's face and perform matches against the claimed identity or the facial database. It is possible that the user may need to move and re attempt the verification based on his facial position. The system usually comes to a decision in less than 5 seconds. To prevent a fake face or mold from faking out the system, many systems now require the user to smile, blink, or otherwise move in a way that is human before verifying. Up to 128 Eigen vectors are created for each person in order to achieve unmistakable identification. Facial Recognition System (FRS) is combined with other suitable biometric technologies to reduce nuisance and false alarm rates. In a controlled environment with proper lighting and choke points, the system can be combined with access control systems to limit access through particular checkpoints.

Iris recognition
Iris recognition is a method of biometric uses pattern recognition techniques based on high-resolution images of the irides of an individual's eyes. unique structures converted into digital templates, provide mathematical representations of the iris that yield unambiguous positive identification of an individual.

Advantages of iris recognition

Its stablity, or template longevity as, barring trauma, a single enrollment can last a lifetime

Backdraws
You can cheat the iris scanner by putting on lens or glasses.

Retinal Scan - analyzing blood vessels in the eye

Oldest biometrics as 1930's research suggested Scanning involves using a low-intensity light source and an optical coupler and can read the patterns at a great level of accuracy. It does require the user to remove glasses, place their eye close to the device, and focus on a certain point. that the patterns of blood vessels on the back of the human eye were unique to each individual

Advantages

There is no known way to replicate a retina, and a retina from a dead person would deteriorate too fast to be useful, so no extra precautions have been taken with retinal scans to be sure the user is a living human being. The difficulty in fooling such a device also make it a great longterm, high-security option.

DNA - analyzing genetic makeup

DNA evidence play a big part in many nations' criminal justice systems. It has been used to prove that suspects were involved in crimes and to free people who were wrongly convicted.It has been integral to several high-profile criminal cases. Most people have a basic idea of what DNA is. It's essentially an instruction manual and blueprint for everything in your body. A DNA molecule is a long, twisting chain known as a double helix.

Advantages
DNA is tightly wrapped into 23 pairs of chromosomes. This is what makes DNA evidence so valuable in investigations -- it's almost impossible for someone else to have DNA that is identical to yours.

Behavioral biometrics:
Two forms

1.Voice

2.Signature

Speaker Recognition - analyzing vocal behavior

Voice authentication, also known as speaker verification, is defined as the automated verification of a persons claimed identity, based on unique characteristics of their voice. A simple microphone is enough to record the voice, and then most of the algorithm are analyzing the voice spectrum. Voice and speech can be combined

Advantages
To prevent recorded voice use, most devices require the high and low frequencies of the sound to match, which is difficult for many recording instruments to recreate well. Also, some devices generate random number sequences for each verification.

Signature - analyzing signature biometrics

Handwriting recognition system's sensors can include a touchsensitive writing surface or a pen that contains sensors that detect angle, pressure and direction. The software translates the handwriting into a graph and recognizes the small changes in a person's handwriting from day to day and over time.

Advantages
Specific details recorded by signature-scan may include the total time taken to sign, the ration of pen-up to pen-down time, the speed of the strokes, the pressure applied, the number and direction of the strokes, and the total size of the signature, among other variables". So a forger would have to recreate your signature within some window of time while applying the correct pressure, except for 'pressure applied'.

Future Research
Biometrics has all of the desirable characteristics that we described in the beginning.we might develop an automated biometrics-based identification/verification system like Vein pattern , Ear shape , Body odor , Body salinity (salt) , Electronic nose The next few years you will see just about every thing come with biometric protection. Mobile phones, MP3 players, cars, laptop computers, building access, locker access.

Conclusion
Biometrics is a very interesting and exciting field that has be growing exponentially in recent years . The wide variety of physically unique traits our bodies give us will soon allow us to live in a very secure password-less world. As the demands for high-performance and highly reliable biometrics-based identification/verification systems increase, more hybrid biometrics-based systems are expected to be developed to meet the ever-increasing needs for automated personal identification.

 IN FUTURE BIOMETRICS WILL BE THE DOOR WAY TO ALL THE ACCESABLE SYSTEMS

Thank you